1. The Field of the Invention
The field of this invention relates to tools, devices, and methods for assisting handicapped or persons of limited ambulatory ability with respect to bathroom facilities. More specifically, this invention relates to devices for assisting persons with limited ambulatory ability in entering a bathtub or shower stall in a conventional bathroom setting. Examples of such devices are chairs that slide on rails to help move non-ambulatory persons into a standard residential bathtub and transfer benches that allow a person to sit within the bathtub.
2. The Relevant Technology
Though the majority of the population enjoys full function of their limbs and hence normal ambulatory ability, there is a significant number of those amongst us who suffer impaired ambulatory ability. The causes for such ambulatory impairment are numerous including birth defects, accidental injuries, crippling, natural incidences of arthritis and other ailments common to the onset of old age, temporary injuries, etc. The range or degree of an ambulatory impairment varies from slight impairment that may be corrected by brace or cane to total impairment where a wheel chair or other means is constantly required for the person to move about. A mid-range ambulatory impairment would likely require a walker in order to assist a person so afflicted in moving around a familiar environment such as the home.
While progress has been made to ease the difficulties that face ambulatory impaired persons through legislation such as the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) and public building codes providing for handicap access to essential facilities, there exist numerous situations that require devices and methods that will assist ambulatory impaired persons in accomplishing daily tasks. A great variety of such devices exist to assist ambulatory impaired and other handicapped persons with routine activities.
One particularly important and common daily task is that of showering or bathing. The danger of mixing water with ambulatory impairment provides ripe opportunity for slipping and falling in a bathtub or shower. Furthermore, something as common as a tub wall that is easily stepped over or traversed by a fully ambulatory person becomes an immense obstacle and hurdle for the ambulatory impaired.
Currently, there exists a multitude of devices for assisting the ambulatory impaired in showering and bathing. Such devices are in many instances designed for the non-ambulatory person though, depending on the design, ambulatory impaired persons often may benefit as well. There are occasions, however, when the features of a given device designed to accommodate the non-ambulatory actually inhibit those persons whose ambulatory ability is only partially impaired.
One common and significant problem found in virtually all current devices is protrusion away from the side of the bathtub. In other words, the devices have a portion that extends beyond the outer wall of a common bathtub. This extension or protrusion may in some cases interfere with an ambulatory impaired persons' ability to move within the confined quarters of a typical residential bathroom. Furthermore, the protrusion may interfere with the use of other ambulator aids such as canes, walkers, or wheelchairs. Naturally, these same concerns apply to someone who is assisting a non-ambulatory person from a wheelchair onto these devices and may be even more problematic since minimal bathroom space is already significantly overcrowded by having two persons and a wheelchair present.
One current device is a track and wheeled-chair combination. A parallel track is permanently or semi-permanently mounted onto a standard residential bathtub and a special wheelchair is designed so that the seat portion of the chair may slide with wheels or other rolling means from the chair frame onto the parallel tracks resting on the standard bathtub. In this way the non-ambulatory person may be brought to a position where the chair frame and the parallel tracks are aligned and then simply slid from the chair frame onto the parallel tracks and into a standard bathtub for showering or bathing. While such a device has many uses, it also has a number of drawbacks including, most notably, the use of a specialized wheelchair that may entail added expense. The parallel tracks would not work with a standard wheelchair but can only be used as part of a specialized chair and track combination. Furthermore, small bathrooms may not have enough room for a wheel chair to be turned parallel with the bathtub.
Other drawbacks include the extension of the parallel tracks away from the edge of the bathtub and the non-portable nature of the tracks that remain permanently or semipermanently affixed on the bathtub. This permanent or semi-permanent arrangement makes it difficult for fully ambulatory persons to use the bathtub in normal fashion as would be desirable where a bathroom is shared between fully ambulatory and ambulatory impaired persons. Again, the protrusion or extension of the parallel tracks away from the edge of the bathtub may cause accidental injury or inconvenience.
Another device combines a wheelchair with a folding parallel track that remains part of the wheelchair. The folding track has support legs and can be folded to a down position into the bathtub, the track being in a relatively horizontal position by way of the supporting legs. To use such a device, the non-ambulatory person is placed in the wheelchair, brought into the bathroom, and then the parallel track assembly is folded into the down position with the support legs, and hence the parallel track, in the bathtub. Next, the non-ambulatory person is then slid on the laterally moving seat from the main wheelchair frame along the parallel tracks until properly positioned in the bathtub for bathing or showering. Such a device is very cumbersome when used with a conventional wheelchair and is of no use to persons who are ambulatory impaired rather than non-ambulatory. As mentioned above, small bathrooms sometimes do not allow a standard wheelchair to be placed parallel with the bathtub.
Yet another device uses a track that is suspended from inside of the tub to outside of the tub by end assemblies, one in the tub, the other outside the tub. A pivoting or rotating chair will run along the track for moving the ambulatory impaired.
To operate this device, an ambulator impaired person is placed in the chair outside of the bathtub and then slid along the track to a position inside of the bathtub. Since the chair rotates or pivots, persons may be placed in the rotating chair from a number of positions thereby increasing the flexibility of this device. Because the nature of this device has a portion inside the tub and a portion well outside of the tub to suspend the track, there is significant encumbrance in the bathroom area that limits use of this device to dedicated purposes for assisting the ambulatory impaired. It would be fairly inconvenient to share a bathroom having such a device between ambulatory impaired and unimpaired persons.
Finally, most freestanding devices of this nature lack stability. Making sure a transfer device is stable becomes particularly important when heavier individuals are involved.
What is needed is a sliding chair and track type device that does not protrude away from the sides of a standard bathtub. Furthermore, a device is needed that is convenient, portable, and still allows easy access for use by both non-ambulatory persons as well as persons who are mobile but ambulatorily impaired.
A number of transfer benches also exist to assist persons in bathing or showering. Again, these transfer benches typically require extensions beyond the edge of a standard bathtub. One folding bench embodiment allows a caregiver to move a non-ambulatory person from a position outside the tub easily into a position inside the tub. The transfer bench essentially straddles the side of the bathtub allowing a person to be placed in a sliding chair outside the bathtub. Again, in order to function properly there is as much of the device outside the tub as inside the tub. The sliding chair takes a person from a position clearly outside the tub to a position inside the tub. The size of the transfer bench required to accomplish the above purpose takes a significant amount of bathroom space and creates uncomfortably cramped quarters.
Again, what is needed is a device that operates effectively to transfer a person from a point outside of a bathtub to a point inside of a bathtub without extending beyond the edge of the bathtub itself. Such a device would constitute a significant improvement in the art in that many advantages would be realized as enumerated hereafter.